


Retribution

by pendaly



Series: Gem Lyrium AU [1]
Category: Dragon Age II, Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Codependency, Gem Fusion, Minor Character Death, Slavery, vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 04:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18066365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendaly/pseuds/pendaly
Summary: Fenris is taken by his master into the deeproads, unaware that something beautiful and terrifying waits for him there.





	Retribution

**Author's Note:**

> I just cranked this out for fun on a train because I've had this crossover in my head for almost two years now. I'll probably write some more content for it later, but I really needed to get this scene out. I haven't really edited it at all :/

The pulsing red haze of the caverns is something Fenris never will grow used to. It’s oppressive and erratic and it feels like the heartbeat of a panicked man. It feels like his own heartbeat.

Danarius’s grip on his upper arm is strong and firm as he drags him down into the depths of the deep roads. This area is so devoid of darkspawn for the deeproads. Fenris has few memories that he can hold to, but even he knows that this deep underground there should be darkspawn pouring into the old ruined roads.

Holes, not quite humanoid in shape, litter the walls in clusters. They’re deep and unnatural and he has no clue what caused them. He has no clue what could cause so many hundreds of holes of such uniform shape and he doesn't want to find out.

The erratic red pulsing flows through the walls to an end of the road that Fenris cannot see from here, at least not until they round the corner.

For a moment, Fenris stops. He stops and he stares up at the sight before him and tries to make sense of it and in his pause Danarius turns and claps him over the head, “Useless elf.”

Rage courses through him and he almost tries to fight back, except that he is still frozen, staring up at Her.

She is enormous and beautiful. Her skin is stone and light and finally he sees where the pulsing red has come from. Through her skin, veins of red wander her body which melds into the wall. He might have thought her a statue. An old dwarven icon. Perhaps a Paragon.

Then she moves.

Glowing red eyes open and stare down into his soul.

Lyrium.

Her skin seeps with Lyrium and he is utterly and completely angry. Is she the reason that he’s had the substance seared into his skin? Is she the reason he has no memory from the first twenty years of his life? Twenty years of memories he might have held onto if he’d had them? Memories of any home he might have had before, of any friends or family he may have had. Is she the cause of his loneliness and his servitude and his pain?

One long stony hand reaches from the end of the cavern and she tries to pull herself from the wall, creeping forward like something from the deep roads would. Her fingers dig claw-like into the mosaic floor of the road and Fenris sees something in her eyes. It boils like his own rage which runs ice cold into fear as her hand, the size of his own body comes hurtling towards him.

Danarius is a coward.

He runs.

Fenris stands still, swirling and frozen as one dark hand laced with red comes at him and then stops.

Its fingers brush gentle over his shoulder and if this thing weren’t big enough to be a small mountain, he might have protested. He might have let himself glow and put his fist through the solid rock of her hand. But it is the size of a mountain and her fingers are gentle as they trace down his arm, following the paths of the lyrium in his skin and she looks at him with those red glowing eyes wide and for the first time he can see a feeling other than rage in them.

She pulls herself from the wall and the streams of red lyrium flowing through the cavern dims. She is the only source of light with her brilliant red veins.

She takes a step.

And then another.

And soon she stands over Fenris and her other hand comes to caress his cheek with one large thumb and the words she speaks come out gravelly and rough, as if she’d never spoken before.

“Dance?”

He stares up at her, craning his neck, “I beg your pardon?”

She flinches away and pulls her hands from him. For how large she is, she almost seems small.

She says it again, quieter, like a child, “Dance?”

Fenris swallows a lump in his throat. Her voice is lost and broken and he reaches out for her, “I’m afraid I don’t know much about dancing.”

She smiles and with her thumbs and forefingers takes Fenris’s hands, “Everyone can Dance.”

Her fingers are so gentle with his arms as they twirl him and he almost feels like he gets it. He is lonely and hurting too and so he lets her twirl him. He lets her lead and falls into step as she dances him and starts to sway on her feet herself.

It’s hard to dance with someone so many times larger than himself, but he manages and soon it feels as natural as anything and there’s a part of him that wants to cry and a bigger part of him that never wants this to end, he’d never known dancing to feel so right and when he thinks he can’t take anymore, when he thinks that he’ll break down with this woman of stone and lyrium he’s never met before, something amazing happens.

He is all rage and loneliness and companionship. He is something big. He can see the deep roads from so high up and he is a being of light and hurt and he stumbles back.

Except he isn’t him.

They are a being of light. They are a being of companionship and rage. They are _lonely._

They are _lonely_ and now they have themselves. They wrap their glowing arms around themselves and weep bright tears of liquid lyrium and scream, digging their fingers into their earthen fleshy sides. Who are they? What are they?

They are not lyrium. They are not elf. They are something greater. Something so powerful and so angry and there are so many they want to hurt. There are so many they want to make feel the anger.

They turn their attention to the weak little human. The human Danarius. The human Danarius who thought that allowing them to Be would help him. As if they are nothing more than a tool to be used. As if they can be bought.

With a snarl they reach for him. Their light pulses and moves and when he realizes what is happening, he bolts.

He’s small, and they are big. They are powerful and they will not be kept prisoner any longer. They will hurt him. They will make him scream. They will make him as angry as they are, as hurt as they are, and they will make him die slow and painful. They take off down the deeproads after the little cockroach on all fours, except there are limbs that they aren’t used to. There are six of them where there used to be four and they scuttle bug-like down the corridor.

These tunnels are confining and large and with two hands on the floor, their knees propelling them forward, and two hands outstretched they follow Danarius and pluck him up by the back of his robes. Their fingers pluck his staff from him and grind it into sawdust.

The fear in his eyes is delicious.

They squeeze him tight, not enough to kill him, but enough to make it apparent that they plan to.

He’s saying words that neither of them care about and they laugh at him.

“You think there is anything you can say?”

They fling him like a doll across the cavern and he hits the wall with a resounding “Thud!” And falls fifteen feet too the floor. They pick him up about the midsection and laugh at him. He thought he could control them? He thought there was any way that he might have stopped them? What had he hoped to gain?

They are more powerful, they are stronger, and they understand each other. They see the loneliness and the fear and the abandonment and they have Memories. They have memories of a faraway planet that never wanted them. That left them here, a horrible testament to a failed experiment on an inconsequential planet.

They roar and begin the climb up towards the surface. It is time that Thedas saw the most powerful being on this planet and the next. They want to go home. They want to go home.

Light comes streaking down from overhead as they breach the surface of the earth. They gaze up into the sky and bask in the glow of the sun. The sun is radiant like them. There are no people here as they emerge from the earth like a sleeping giant.

They will let Danarius go, but not before ensuring a horrible demise. Not before leeching red lyrium into his skin so that he cannot escape it, so that he will go mad, so that he will lose himself the way he forced them to lose themselves. He’s begging for mercy. As if they would grant him anything of the sort. His eyes glow red like theirs now and he’s babbling incoherency. He’ll be nothing but a statue of crackling red energy by this time tomorrow and they will let him enjoy his last day of life in misery. In terror. Overtaken with paranoia. Failing to hold onto his thoughts and his memories, taken by lyrium.

Magic will not save him, nothing will save him, and that is exactly what he deserves.

They let him go and he stumbles through the forest, terrified and wandering, aimlessly lost and convinced that every tree, every bush, every blade of grass, is out to kill him.

They watch him wander in sick pleasure, grinning wide with teeth bared.

They are free.

They both are free.

And they are not alone. They have each other. They have themselves. And they are the most powerful thing in the world and no one will keep them prisoner ever again. They will fill the holes in each other and they will never be lonely again.


End file.
